Syracuse church’s new pastor, church worker: We’re listening to what the neighborhood needs

David Lassman / The Post-StandardRev. Marti Swords-Horrell (left) is the new pastor at Brown Memorial United Methodist Church off South Geddes Street on Davis Street. She is with Andrew Gladstone-Highland, a new church and community worker at the church.

We sit under a leafy tree in the corner of the parking lot of Brown Memorial United Methodist Church, just off South Geddes Street, and talk about the Near West Side, the challenges it presents, theology and how the church is more than a building for worship.

I’m talking with Marti Swords-Horrell, the pastor at Brown Memorial (and West Genesee United Methodist) and Andrew Gladstone-Highland, the church’s church and community worker. Both are new to their jobs.

Marti replaced the Rev. Betty Morey, who retired after serving 17 years at Brown. Andrew’s position was filled by Donna Kay Campbell, who’s been reassigned. She worked out of Brown for 10 years.

The congregation has been a part of the west side of the city since 1867, starting as Magnolia Chapel of Syracuse, on Magnolia Street. The small brick church, at the corner of Geddes and Davis Street, went up in 1876, “much of the work being done by members of the congregation.” The name comes from Alexander Brown, a wealthy inventor who is described in a church history as a “liberal contributor to the building fund.”

The old building, which needs work but sports a new roof, is an anchor at the western fringes of the new Near West Side neighborhood coming together between Geddes Street and downtown. It’s a needy place to be but the pastor says “We love it here.”

Brown and St. Lucy’s are the last of the mainline churches in this part of the city; St. Paul’s Lutheran left 15 years ago and Delaware Baptist in 2005.

Andrew Gladstone-Highland spent part of his early life in Ithaca. He’s fresh from working with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Baltimore. Before that, he was assigned to a mobile home community outside of Lansing, Mich. Andrew’s wife, Mary, is doing similar work on the East Side of Utica. They live in the parsonage next to the church.

Andrew and Mary are the only two Methodist missionaries assigned to Upstate New York.

Both Marti and Andrew agree their main job just now involves opening their ears.

“We need to listen to the people of the neighborhood, be present for them, “ the pastor explained. “We need to reflect their needs. We’re learning every day of our lives.” (She’s working on her Spanish.) Already, she’s tuned into the importance of jobs, the immigration issue, the need to find something constructive for youth, to keep them in school and “keep the girls from getting pregnant.”

The pastor came to her mission while a student at Colgate University, where she’s gone from her home in New York City to study to be a doctor. Despite the fact her father was a Methodist minister, she had “thrown that all away” when she enrolled at Colgate. However, a conversion experience in a theology class changed her life. “God kind of grabbed me,”she says, and “I couldn’t get enough of theology. I headed right into Yale Divinity School when I graduated.”

She later had a little parish in Chicago, her first husband (a political science professor) died and she later married a man she met in graduate school. Dana Horrell is pastor at Jordan United Methodist Church. The couple has two children, 22 and 19.

Marti is not a stranger to the neighborhood. She served on the church’s board of trustees (along with the Rev. Kathleen Barden) before she was appointed pastor. She’d been in Clay and Fayetteville. She plays the cello and guitar and sings and hopes to lure Syracuse University students to Brown Memorial to help run an arts program.

She sees the neighborhood, which has deep poverty, as a place where “people want to stay and live safely and securely.”

We’re at the end of the era of big, beautiful edifices as houses of worship, the pastor believes. Look around: urban churches are closing. The survivors are “more than just churches” but places of service to the community “and not just a place to go on Sunday.” She raises a question: “What if church were not a noun, but a verb.”

She quotes the apostle Luke, who said “Stay in the city.”

Brown Memorial’s mission is “to be a safe space in which to experience grace, and grow in our knowledge and love of God.” It reaches out to the people who live around it.

“This church has always been a welcoming place,” Marti says. “We wish to be connected, to feel we’ve made a difference in someone else’s life.”

The church shows its age inside. The pastor’s office has a picture of Alexander Brown hanging on the wall. The sanctuary has been rearranged to accommodate about 100 seats. That’s the number of people on church rolls but Marti says “we serve, many, many more.”

Brown Memorial is home to a food pantry, which is open Tuesday night and 10 a.m. to noon on Wednesday and Friday, The pantry has been run the past 20 years by Judy Eyer, a volunteer drawn into the city from her home church, Luther Memorial in North Syracuse.

The clothes closet is open 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. The church hosts an Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every night, along with meetings of Syracuse United Neighbors, once a month. There’s a lawyer in the building every Monday, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. to meet with residents.

Dick Case writes Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 470-2254 or by e-mail, dcase@syracuse.com.